A contingent of marchers emerged from New Beech Grove Baptist Church in Newport News Sunday, singing “We Shall Overcome” and celebrating the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.

The march is organized annually by local members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

This year, the route was longer than it has been previous years, and the temperature was dropping rapidly about midday. But the group was still resolved to march.

In the church, organizer and local SCLC President Andrew Shannon reminded the crowd of about 100 of freedom fighters in the 1960s who faced adversity head on to fight for what was right, particularly the people who marched from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., for voting rights.

Shannon said the march was a symbolic way to honor the efforts and achievements of civil rights leaders from the past and to continue to advocate for equal rights.

Terri Best, a member of the Newport News School Board, said in reading about King, he was mostly a normal boy growing up who played baseball and wanted to be a minister like his father and also a firefighter.

But King also had a vision and dreams, and that made him special, Best said. King saw injustice and endeavored to do something about, showing future generations the value that a dream can hold.

Meredith Hamilton Archer, daughter of former Newport News Del. Phillip Hamilton, advocated for criminal justice reform before the march. Hamilton was accused of offering Old Dominion University state funding in exchange for a job at ODU. He was convicted of bribery and extortion in 2011 and has been serving a prison sentence of 9 ½ years.

Archer tearfully maintained her father’s innocence and said from what she’s seen of the justice and prison system, there needed to be change. She mentioned reforms such as term limits for judges and an approach in prisons that focuses more on rehabilitation than punishment.

“What we’re doing is not working,” she said, highlighting high rates of recidivism and the large population of people in prison.

When it came time to march, people linked arms and started to sing, heading out to Beechmont Road and Warwick Boulevard en route to Manna Church on Tabbs Lane.